His Favorite Cousin
by DeepDownSlytherin
Summary: Sirius and Andromeda try to remember the good times.


_Harry Potter and all related characters and ideas are the property of J.K. Rowling, who obviously rocks our collective socks._

_Sirius and Andromeda remember. Another one shot, set during OoTP. I don't know if Dumbledore would let Andromeda come to the Order's headquarters, but I think he must have known Sirius was in pretty bad shape, and I figure it's possible, her being Tonks's mother and all. Yay for angsty Sirius!_

**His Favorite Cousin**

The moon was hidden behind a cloud as a woman stepped out of the shadows and into the faint light of a streetlamp in the square facing a deserted street. She knew no one was watching, but if they had been, they might have wondered where she came from, for she had not walked into the square from the brightly lit main street, and no car had dropped her off. She was the kind of woman people called attractive- she was not young enough to be termed pretty, but not old enough to have lost her beauty.

Andromeda Tonks (neé Black) stood for a moment, pensively studying the seemingly empty space between two of the rundown houses. She knew it was there, hadn't she been there enough times in her childhood? No less gloomy than her own home but fun nonetheless because coming there meant cousins to play with. She dug in her pockets and withdrew the scrap of paper Dora had given her. The tiny, precise writing was certainly not her daughter's, but Andromeda knew enough about Dora's activities to guess whose it was. She looked at the scrap of paper, and then back at the houses before her, and was not at all surprised to see another house- number twelve, pushing its way in between the two she had been looking at. This accomplished, she held the scrap of paper delicately between two fingers and set it on fire, letting it burn down to her fingertips before dropping it on the pavement and crushing the charred scrap under her heel. Then she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked up to the newly appeared house. She didn't knock, but rather tried the door, and it fell open under her hand, as she expected. All the doors on the old family homes were spelled to allow entrance to those with pure blood, whether disowned or not.

She paused in the entryway, and then removed her cloak and hung it on the coat rack made of writhing snakes. The house looked much as she remembered, except it was no longer gleaming as Auntie had always demanded, and the hallways no longer rang with the voices of two high-spirited little boys. Her footsteps were muffled by a thick layer of dust, marked by the footprints of others, and even her own breathing sounded loud in the tomb-like silence. Stepping carefully, both because she was reluctant to disturb the silence, and to keep her robes from a good coating of dust, she headed for the kitchen steps. They had rarely been allowed in the kitchen as children, because it had been the domain of the house elves, but it was also by far the most cheerful part of the house, and she guessed she might find him there.

She paused in the doorway, for she was right, he was sitting at the kitchen table, and she knew immediately it had been a good idea to ask Dora if she could visit him. She had moved so lightly he had not heard her approach, and he was sitting with his elbows resting on the table, his forehead resting on fisted hands. His hair, too long ever since he was old enough to notice it drove Auntie mad, was falling forward to conceal his face, but Andromeda did not miss the bottle on the table near him. With a vague smile of both fondness and regret, she stepped into the kitchen.

His head snapped up, blinking confusedly at the sound of her heels clicking authoritatively, for the floor was clean here. A well-delivered sharp slap to the back of the head let him know immediately who it was, despite some fifteen years since they had seen each other.

"Andy?"

She leaned against the table and favored her favorite cousin with the smile that had once been the undoing of many a Hogwarts boy.

"Hello Sirius. Interested parties thought you might like some company."

"Interested parties?" he echoed through, she recognized, a haze of alcohol. In consideration of that, she snatched the bottle out of his reach and placed it in the pantry, and then put the kettle on.

"Yes Darling, though you may not recall it, you have friends, and some family, who worry about you." She set two mugs down hard on the table, and then turned and caught his chin in her hand. He had changed, she saw. And while that was hardly unexpected, it was not just a few lines and a few more years, but that haunted look of being pursued and confined in his eyes. She smiled at him again, and leaned and kissed his forehead, wondering not for the first time if Regulus was not the luckier of the Black boys.

"You look like Hell," was all she said, giving him no indication of her thoughts.

"You look…good actually," he answered. "How are you Andy? How's Ted?"

"I'm fine, and so is Ted. And as for my little girl, I suspect you see her more than we do."

A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "She's quite a girl. You did all right with that one Andy. You should hear her talk back to Mother's portrait."

"Better I don't," she replied as the kettle began to whistle. "Would be terribly embarrassing to have to wash out her mouth at her age."

He chuckled.

She knew he hated for anyone to fuss, but she put aside her concern for male pride in this case, as she nudged the mug of tea in his direction and sat next to him at the table.

"Is it that bad?"

He looked around the kitchen with quick, darting glances. "Worse than I thought. I wanted to do something to help, but...being in this house. There are so many ghosts. Not only that ghastly portrait, but I turn and I expect to see Reg, or Father, or...even you girls."

It had been years since anyone had included Andromeda as part of a collective group with her sisters. She thought she was beyond hurting over it, after all she knew her choices were the right ones, but his words did make her sad, for the way they had once been.

"There are good memories here too Sirius," she said, gently.

"After twelve years in Azkaban, I'm not sure I have any of them left..." he replied, looking down at his hands.

"Well, I still remember," she began. "I remember..." she searched for something to make him smile. "I remember the first, and _only_, time Auntie and Uncle let you invite James Potter to tea?"

He looked up at her then, and he did smile. "And he made the scones chase Kreacher around, and he put that hex on Reggie that made him talk backwards...it took Mother and Father two days to figure out how to reverse it. That was a really good one. It was after that they told me not to play with that Potter boy anymore."

"Remember when Reggie was about eleven, he had that huge crush on Melvina Burke, and Bella sent him all those "love letters" supposedly from her?"

"And he wrote back love poems!" Sirius finished for her, chuckling. "Merlin, they were so bad! We positively rolled around on the floor over them. Oh poor Reg, his first love."

"Oh, and remember that time Granny kept hassling you about cutting your hair, and so that night at dinner we did a growing spell so it was all the way down to your ankles, and we had guests so she wouldn't dare say anything. She spent the whole dinner looking like she was inches from a stroke!"

"Remember the winter ball when I gave Cissy a _runny_ nose...literally!" He laughed out loud then. "She was chasing it all over the room, screaming! I thought it was funny, who knew she'd hex my pants off, literally!"

"Remember Bella's first dress ball when Mother made her wear those-"

-pink robes!" He finished. "And the time she made Reggie wear that pirate shirt with the lacy ruffles!"

She was collapsed on the table in giggles. "Remember the games we used to play? We'd pretend we were pirates, or explorers, or rogue princes and princesses?"

He smirked and for just a split second she saw the bravado of a teenage boy. "I played 'doctor' once with Jacquetta Rookwood, but I reckon that's not what you meant..."

"No I didn't, you little pervert! I don't want to know about your teenage conquests," she mock scolded, snapping him with the tea towel.

"Did Bella ever tell you about that time she snuck up to the library with Simon Flint during a party?"

"She _didn't_!"

He nodded, amused with the thrill they could still get from "telling on" each other, even twenty-year-old transgressions. "Right on that huge polished desk that father used to read his papers at!"

"Remember how Reggie used to follow you around? He worshipped you..."

He smiled, but no longer laughed. "Yeah, way back then he did. Later..." he shook his head. "Idiot, what was he thinking..."

"Maybe the same thing Bella was," she said, the giggles fading away. "He always admired her. It was hard not to be inspired by how much conviction she had..."

"That's bullshit and you know it, Andy. We didn't..."

"But I had Ted, Sweetie. And you had James, and Remus. It's a lot easier to make the right choices when you have someone to turn to."

He sighed again, all the laughter gone, and looked away from her at the fire. He mumbled something inaudible, in which she could only make out of the words "my fault."

"Sirius, don't!" She grabbed his hands hard, maybe painfully hard, hoping to surprise him into understanding. "You _don't_ do that. Yes, it was a tragedy and a waste, but Reg was a man and he made his own choices. You can't make yourself responsible for that..."

"If I hadn't run away, if I had been there..."

"You did what you had to do Sirius. We both did. Don't you think I ask myself the same things? Maybe Bella was too far gone by then, but could I have saved Cissy? You can't second guess your life away."

"What life?" he said, the bitterness returned. "I let him down...like everyone...like Lily and James...Harry. Now this…this is what I…"

His shoulders jerked on a ragged breath that was nearly a sob, and she rose and walked over to him, sitting on the edge of the table, and stroking his hair.

"Sirius, don't do this...don't torture yourself. Everything you've done, you've done it for the right reasons."

"I miss them. I miss us. The way we were."

"Me too."

She had come to help, but she realized she couldn't, not really. She could distract him, give him a few moments of laughter, but she couldn't give him what he needed most. She couldn't give him absolution. Instead, she gave him oblivion that was not whisky-induced, with a gentle sleeping spell, one that would give him, vague, gentle dreams instead of nightmares. She couldn't get rid of the ghosts and the demons, but her spell would keep them at bay for a few hours.

She leaned and kissed his forehead again.

"Good night, Sirius."


End file.
